Eighteen months ago, the political and media establishment was busy celebrating a new era for British politics, as a coalition government was formed for the first time in a century. The occupation of the City of London is a reminder of just how far public dissent has developed since then. The size and global reach of these demonstrations has surprised almost everyone. Their targeting of corporate greed and austerity is a narrative that is rapidly becoming mainstream. The student demonstration on 9 November, called by the National Campaign Against Fees and Cuts and now with official NUS backing, will also march on the City.

The key target of the demonstration is the government's higher education white paper, which has drawn widespread criticism from academics, who see it as a fundamental threat to the purpose of the university. It can be best described as a chaotic attempt to introduce a market into higher education, with for-profit private providers, institutional closures and disastrous implications for access.

Meanwhile, the fiscally catastrophic implications of the government's raising of tuition fees, which will cost money rather than saving it, will be compensated for by raiding bursaries and student support in order to grant barely meaningful "fee waivers". For a generation of people who have had their EMA scrapped, and who face massive rates of youth unemployment, the outlook after these reforms is bleak.

Criticism of the white paper has not been confined to the usual dissenters. University heads have already quietly voiced concerns. Vice chancellors must now condemn and refuse to implement the government's proposals. The National Campaign Against Fees and Cuts will soon release a pledge for university leaders to sign, committing them to publicly oppose the white paper and safeguard their institutions against cuts and privatisation. If vice chancellors join students and staff in mobilising against the proposals, the government will simply not be able to make them a reality. Meanwhile, another wave of localised direct action following the 9 November demonstration will put managements under pressure.

Far from defending the basic principles of public education, some vice chancellors have actively supported its erosion. The appointment of the UCL provost Malcolm Grant as Andrew Lansley's NHS commissioning board chair is the starkest evidence yet that the privatisation of higher education and the abolition of the NHS are part of a categoric attempt to dismantle the welfare state, designed not only with the same free market ideology in mind, but planned and implemented by the same people.

This political strategy constitutes an attempt to redistribute wealth away from the NHS and the public to private companies, and to redistribute opportunity away from a generation of poor, unemployed people unable to afford university to men such as Grant and private education companies such as Kaplan, who will make handsome sums from the scrapping of the welfare state.

For Grant, who has already come under fire for his central role in lobbying for increases in fees over several years and for his view, as the highest-paid vice chancellor in the UK, that paying the London living wage to his cleaners was a "luxury" that could not be afforded, this revelation may prove to be the last straw. This week, students and staff at UCL will launch a campaign for Grant's resignation: he should be forced to choose between leading the academic community of UCL and running the newly gutted NHS. Any respectable figure also considering a high-paid career in the toxic world of privatised services should take note.

The growing power of students and staff stretches far beyond their own campuses. One of the greatest achievements of last year's student movement was to instil, for the first time in a decade or more, a sense of agency in its supporters – whether or not they were active participants. The idea that protest – specifically direct action protest – is meaningful and effective, has resonated with more and more layers of society.

In a context in which every pillar of mainstream political legitimacy – the American dream, the European dream, the dream of perpetual growth – seems to be collapsing, the prospects for a genuine alternative are far from academic. Those camping out on the steps of St Paul's may well prove to be a small part of a broad and serious movement. They will be joined in November by tens of thousands of students as we march on the City, and then by millions of workers out on strike.

If the government refuses to reverse its policies on health, education and social justice, it will find itself confronted with a serious and sustainable extra-parliamentary opposition with growing public support, determined to derail its austerity programme. On 9 November and in the following weeks and months, students may well be able to make the defeat of the higher education white paper the first real victory of that movement.